re: #7 Dark_Falcon

I’m going to get downdined a lot for this one: I think supporting Pinochet’s coup was the correct decision. Allende was courting Cuban support and had pushed plans to “introduce socialism at once”. He had to be considered hostile to our interests and we really could not afford Chile as a Soviet satellite. He had to go and his support base had to be destroyed.

I am withholding downdinging, although that is my first impulse, because I know you and have seen you examine and change your thought processes.

The U.S. chose to support a murderer, a torturer, and a fascist in Pinochet. We chose, as we always did in Latin America in those days, to choose the murderer over the Commie. A Communist who committed the crimes of Pinochet would be rightly condemned as a monster, and his crimes attributed to the innate inhumanity of Communism. Let’s not let the Fascist off the hook.

We screwed up.